PCMS Contact Centre

Customer contact centre outbound agents are a chatty bunch by nature but here are five things you will never hear them say;

1.       ” I don’t like talking to new people ” – in my experience customer contact centre outbound agents love to talk to people, it’s what they get paid to do!   If they didn’t like talking to people how can they be expected to engage with customers and prospects throughout the day?

2.      ” I give up easily” – if your customer contact centre  agents are saying this then you do have problems, like the last point customer contact centre  agents like to keep your prospects talking for long enough to establish why they are saying no.  If they give up at the first hurdle their outbound sales career isn’t going to last long.

3.       “I tell customers what they want, what they need doesn’t matter” – I admit I fudged this one a little as you do hear this phrase in the industry, it’s one of the things which gives telesales a bad reputation.  What I should have said is ‘you won’t hear our telesales agents saying this’.  Why?  Because we have worked hard to create an environment of needs based selling, all of our agents spend time talking to customers to understand what their needs are, then they recommend products or services which fit those needs.

4.       “My job is boring” – we keep our agents motivated and connected with products and services while offering career development.  Done right outbound calling is anything but boring.

5.      ” Telemarketers are all the same” – we recognise that the people we sell to are all different – ages, sex, background, nationality which is why we employ a wide range of agents from a wide range of backgrounds to engage with your customers.

PCMS offer a wide range of services including telesales, telemarketing, customer satisfaction surveys and customer helplines.

October’s thanks go to Amanda Dowie.  Amanda has worked for PCMS for 2 years as an inbound agent.  During that time she has achieved consistently good monthly and weekly stats.  During the last month she has been assisting her Team Leader developing some efficiencies.  ‘Amanda has worked hard behind the scenes consolidating a large amount of complex information which she has done very well.  She has worked on this project while maintaining good call stats,’ said Bal Kumar her Team Leader.

When advised of her nomination Amanda said ‘ Thanks I’m really chuffed but I couldn’t do it without the help of my team,’ we feel this shows how much of a team player Amanda really is.

Heidi Coles

Business Development Executive

1.        We are a privately owned family run company, PCMS Group was established in 1982 and remains in the same ownership.

2.       We have a very strong financial track record & were included in the 2011 Sunday Times Profit Track 100 for Private Companies.

3.       Our customer contact centre is based in Coventry but we have offices in Huntingdon and Cincinnati and a network of partners and distributors around the world.

4.       We are ISO 9001 approved.

5.        The customer contact centre has been established since 1996, working with prominent brand names to provide a range of services including Membership Management, Fulfilment Services and Customer Management responsibilities.

6.       We offer inbound, outbound, administration, 24/7 support with white mail and email support.

7.       We write bespoke training programs for our customers.  Instead of positioning our customer contact centre as a mass service provider we focus on providing subjective services tailored to meet the requirements of each client that we work with – not all businesses are the same and as such customer call centres should be adaptive and flexible.

8.       We have market leading resourcing and telephony technology available within our customer contact centre.

9.       We have a number of retail based customers and understand this market well, PCMS Groups works with some of the best known retailers in the world including Marks and Spencer’s, John Lewis, Waitrose, Orange, Krispy Kreme and Bass Pro Shops

10.   Bespoke and standard operating hours are offered to our customers as part of our flexible service offerings.

Christmas demands on retailers have a massive impact on call volumes and sales.  PCMS offers specialist services supporting outbound and inbound calls over the Christmas period.  All agents are trained in customer services and increasing consumer basket size – contact us today for more details.

The run up to Christmas is usually the busiest, and most profitable, time of year for retailers.  Whether a large multinational brand, or a smaller individual retailer, the run up to Christmas can place huge strains on your supply infrastructure.

Do your phone lines become clogged in the run up to Christmas?

Do you struggle with customers becoming frustrated by the call wait time in busy periods?

Could you use some additional resources to help you manage increased demand?

Would you like to give your products a Christmas sales boost?

PCMS can help, we offer seasonal support to retailers and have experienced agents available to assist you in the busy Christmas build-up.  Whether you need help to handle overflows in incoming calls, a fully managed sales order line or a telemarketing and telesales campaign to boost sales we have flexible packages that can be built to your specifications.  PCMS has extensive experience in handling both inbound and outbound calls, as one of the UK’s leading independent suppliers of software and services to the retail industry with a number of high profile brands as clientele, we also have a unique understanding of retail that can benefit your business.

PCMS agents have been trained to provide excellent customer service; with our customer satisfaction scores rating consistently high you can have confidence in the PCMS teams representing your brand.  All our agents are trained to listen to your customers and make suggestions to increase basket size, without engaging pushy sales techniques that can turn off consumers.

PCMS has a culture of encouraging staff to raise money for worthy charities, with our contact centre being donated as a call handler for Comic Relief and various other events, it has given everyone a taste of working to help others.

I try to do at least one race or fundraiser for charity each and this year it was the Cancer Research ‘Race for Life’. It was the second time my sister and I have taken part, this year we were joined by my mother Julie Spencer, who is also a member of the team here at the contact centre.

The day started pretty murky and we were positive that there would be showers later in the day, but as we walked to Malvern Park in Solihull the sun came out and it started to warm up . We got to the event early and placed ourselves in front of the stage for the warm up and still it was getting hotter.

As all 3500 women arrived the temperature soared, there were fabulous costumes everywhere from cheerleaders to Nando’s chickens – every one looked amazing!  At 11:07 am we joined the other joggers at the starting line, at this point it was 24 degrees and continued to get hotter.

Despite the heat it was an amazing experience and we completed the 5k race in less than 35 minutes. So far we have raised £285 for cancer research and donations are still coming in. Thank you to everyone who has donated; if you would like to sponsor us for this worthy cause please go to Race for Life.

Carly Smith

New Business Specialist

I was interested to read an article in last week’s Call Centre Helper Magazine by Geoff Galat, entitled “Companies losing out to poor customer experience”.  The article discussed the issue of the majority of businesses having no idea why customers abandon before they have made a purchase from their websites nor how to work to reduce this.

At PCMS we understand this is an unfortunate frustration for retailers and given the extensive experience that we have supporting the UK retail industry, the PCMS Contact Centre has developed a number of techniques to help reduce the number of abandoned sales and help businesses to  pick up more of those wavering customers.  Some of the actions we recommend are:

1. Make it easy to call you – You should have your contact number readily displayed on your site, clearly and boldly as a call to action.  If someone is struggling with your e-commerce site then if they can easily spot your contact number they are more likely to pick up the phone to get help. You have only a few seconds of the customer’s attention before they become frustrated and leave the site.  Clear and simple contact options are a must.
   
2. Make sure the calls are answered – Your contact number is only as good as the people answering the phones, and it is surprising how many times people will call a ‘contact us’ number and not be able to talk to anyone.  If nobody answers the call, most customers are unlikely to try again and will quickly defer to a competitor.  For businesses that can’t guarantee the resource to answer all calls swiftly, outsourcing this to contact centres such as PCMS means that they can ensure all calls get answered by friendly, professional agents.
3. Listen and increase sales! – At PCMS our agents are trained to know the products or services our clients have on offer so we can work with their customers to potentially increase their basket size based on their buying needs.  This should never mean pushing a customer into buying something they do not need, but rather listening to them and suggesting additional purchases that they may genuinely require such as accessories for their new item.
4. Follow up drop offs -  If your database relies on members making repeat purchases, then track the drop offs.  Telemarketing can be utilised to follow up on any members who have cancelled their orders during the process and ask them why they have chosen not to continue purchasing.  This can help to increase your sales and also allows you an insight into why a customer has decided not to purchase, enabling you to then address these issues.
5. Conduct welcome calls -  It is good practice to call new customers when they become members of your site to welcome them to your business.   This makes your customer feel valued and also helps to ensure that they are aware of when offers are available and how to make purchases from the site.  Keep them informed of the benefits of being a member.  By following these processes you set the foundations for building customer loyalty.
6. Thank your customers – Call your customers when they have placed an order thanking them for their business and asking if there is anything else that you can help them with. It’s surprising how few businesses show appreciation to their customer, so those that do are very highly rated.  Keep building relationships and customer loyalty and remember – it is three times more expensive to win a new customer than to develop an existing one.

Heidi Coles

Business Development Executive

A lot of people wonder why they should outsource when surely it is better to have a service or a resource you can see everyday?

Whilst this seems logical, on closer examination outsourcing some or all of your contact centre facilities can open up a lot of opportunities for your business, both financially and in regards to service. The top benefits found by our customers are:

• If contact centre agents are appropriately utilised, it can be cost effective and efficient. Here at PCMS we provide shared and stand alone services meaning we can make any model cost effective for your company.

• Using a specialist outsourced contact centre means that your business can still maintain control over the quality and care of your customers whilst benefiting from the experience, expertise and technology of a specialist contact centre such as that at PCMS.
• Outsourcing is a way to expand your business with minimum risk, you can benefit from extra staff but they are never on your payroll meaning you can expand or contract your services as required, and you don’t have responsibility for paying sick leave or holiday absence.

Carly Smith

New Business Specialist

Yesterday’s return to normal business hours following the recent bank holiday weekends caused a surge in the volume of calls our contact centre handled and that all call centres nationally would have faced.

Being prepared for such events is a big part of effective planning for a contact centre. It is vital to ensure that your service levels are not compromised by exceptionally high volumes of calls, as this would cause customer dissatisfaction, frustration and ultimately form a negative impression of your call centres and the brands they represent.

At PCMS, we spend a lot of time thinking strategically about what events may impact on the level of calls we receive and we manage our agents accordingly. Contingencies are put into place that should the level of calls waiting reach a level where our service level is compromised, the available agents in our contact centre can be reallocated from quiet teams to busy ones.

Effective management strategies such as these have been evidenced in our exceptionally high ratings in customer satisfaction surveys, and positive comments about how helpful our agents are given to team supervisors by satisfied customers.

Mr Hughes said “It’s rare to get such good and concise help on customer phonelines these days, I was very impressed.”

Mrs Coaker commented on how very ‘helpful and efficient’ our agent Amy N was in handling her query.

Melinda Richardson

Research has shown that the opportunity for face to face selling has decreased over the past 2 years. In this shaky economic climate people are less willing to purchase high end goods or larger investment items as they are having to cutback on spending money.

This means that companies are having to work to find new opportunities to sell to customers wherever possible. It is in this climate that your contact centre can be an invaluable asset, at PCMS we have used our inbound calling agents to up sell our customers’ products and increase their customer’s basket size.

Whilst our agents continue to meet customer needs, they also exceed their role by going ‘the extra mile’. Your customers may not be aware of other services your business provides and by having a well informed contact centre prepared to further enlighten your customers about your products you are increasing your return on investment.

Our agents acknowledge the added value they can have by using their skills to facilitate sales, whilst also providing a great service to you and your customers.

Carly Smith
New Business Specialist

This year’s Comic Relief night went on without a hitch and the event was bigger than ever here at PCMS, with more volunteers joining us in our contact centre to handle donation calls than ever before.

The total that PCMS volunteers raised on the phones reached £64,386.00 and our volunteers handled an astounding 1745 calls over the course of the evening. In addition to the donations handled on the phones, PCMS staff also raised the amount of £1,112.85 through a dress down day, raffle and other activities all in the name of ‘do something funny for money’.

Volunteers were involved from across the company and the local community and we were thrilled to receive a visit from ‘Sky Blue Sam’ the Coventry City Football Club mascot who came to cheer us all on and draw the raffle. Food and refreshments were kindly donated for our volunteers by a number of local businesses and suppliers and we are extremely thankful to all of them for supporting us.

The Comic Relief team at PCMS worked tirelessly to organise this voluntary event for the fifth time and everyone at PCMS is extremely proud of what they have achieved. Thanks go out to all of the people who donated raffle prizes, refreshments or their time to make this event such a success.

Melinda Richardson

Marketing Assistant